PUNE: To focus on prevention, detection and increasing conviction rate, the Pune city police have restructured their Crime Branch. Now, units 1 to 5 will report directly to a DCP rank officer, while two units under ACPs have been formed for prosecution and preventive. This is the first time such thing has been done, on the instructions of Commissioner of Police Dr K Venkatesham and Jt CP Ravindra Shisave.
There are two Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) rank officers under Crime Branch, one for cyber crime & economic offences wing (EOW) and other for crime. Out of three Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) rank officers, one is under cyber crime & EOW, while two are under DCP (crime).
Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ashok Morale told Sakal Times, “The prosecution and preventive ACPs will provide professional assistance to investigating officers (IO). The changing crime scenarios has prompted this move. The earlier two ACPs (crime I & II) have been renamed as prosecution and preventive.”
As per the new structure, ACP (preventive) will look after preventive crime branch (PCB), Right to Information (RTI), administration, modus operandi bureau (MOB), technical analysis wing (TAW), criminals surveillance, CCTV cameras location marking.
ACP (prosecution) will supervise units like investigation assistance cell (IAC), prosecution assistance cell (PAC), matters related to court, various commissions.
ACP (Cyber cell & EOW) will supervise cyber crime police station, computer wing, EOW, schemes such as Police Kaka, Buddy Cop, Raksha App and Cops Excellence.
DCP (Crime) Bachchan Singh said, “The five crime branch units have been allotted to each of the five zones of the commissionerate. Their job is to detect serious crimes and keep watch on criminals. It was observed that ACP rank officers were pre-occupied with other works. Hence, these five units will now work directly under the DCP.”
Officials said that recently, the Maharashtra police headquarters after studying 67 community policing programmes across the police units in the state, issued an order to standardise the programmes considering changing needs of the society and crime profile. Apart from the existing Mohalla committee/Peace committee, Mahila Suraksha Samiti, four other programmes will be implemented in all units. These four are currently in operation in Pune like Bharosa Cell, Buddy Cop, Alert Citizen and Police Kaka/Didi.
“The restructuring will also help in better implementation and analysis of various schemes aimed at curbing crimes and also how to deal with them,” an officer added.
